Madonna with the Long Neck

The Virgin sits impossibly elongated - swan neck, tapering fingers, sloping shoulders - while a large, slithering, sleeping Christ Child slides across her lap and a press of beautiful angels crowds in at the left. A lone outsized column rises behind, with a tiny prophet far below. Nothing here is natural; everything is grace pushed to the edge of strangeness, the very definition of Mannerist bella maniera, elegance prized above truth. The sleeping Child already foretells the dead Christ of a Pieta. Left unfinished at Parmigianino's death, it is the movement's purest icon; his Conversion of St Paul is also in this collection.